Are you afraid of the deep, dark ocean? If so, you’re not alone. Thalassophobia (fear of deep water) seems all too common these days from web articles titled “10 Bioluminescent Organisms That Better Cut That Freaky Sh*t Out Before I Call The Cops,” to sci-fi thrillers like “The Meg” (2018) to Tumblr posts like that of user jaclcfrost: “make no mistake i love the ocean with my whole heart but deep water terrifies me so much.. what’s goin on down there? nothing i want to be a part of.” Indeed, the deep ocean – aquatic, cold, dark – is about as opposite an environment from our own as we could imagine. As laid out in the 2018 book Beasts of the Deep: Sea Creatures and Popular Culture: “The deep sea offers us an oppressive and foreboding context – a space unexplored, unknowable, and overwhelming.” But what is the cost of viewing over 70% of our planet with aversion – and who benefits from it?

For centuries, humans have imagined all manner of monsters inhabiting the ocean’s depths. Yet, despite decades of research, little has changed about how we talk, or think, about the deep sea. When I was young, I was fascinated by the “alien” life that inhabited the deep. “We know more about the surface of moon…” Sir David Attenborough assured me in BBC’s Blue Planet (2001), than we know about the deep sea. It wasn’t until I was offered a place on a research expedition in 2017, however, that I would see this world for myself. One morning in September, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, I squeezed into the Pisces V submersible – a metal sphere no bigger than a small sedan. The water changed from blue to black as we descended to 1000 meters (~3280 ft). We were entering into a fabulously unknown world… Or, so I thought.

Mr. Terry Kerby, our submersible pilot, greeted each animal like an old friend (This was the Pisces V’s 889^th dive, after all). Barracks, rattails, Chaunax, Callogorgia, Corallium, Desmophyllym, Chimeras, Dories, Ophiuroids… I was taken aback by how normal these animals looked. The fish were not the deformed oddities I had come to expect. The crabs just looked like crabs. The corals, like corals. Wasn’t this supposed to be an alien frontier?

I learned an important lesson on that expedition: What most people believe about the deep ocean is, at least partly, a lie. There are many reasons why deep-sea imagery might be misleading. For one, can be difficult to get a sense of scale. Ambiguity, paired with fear and imagination, is what makes animals like the Viperfish (Chauliodus spp.) look like something that could eat you for dinner, rather than its actual length of ~30 cm (~12 in). In 2012, an exhibitionput on by the Australian Museum displayed an “oversized model anglerfish” which has since circulated around the web, passing as a real specimen (Most midwater anglerfish (Melanocetidae) are rarely more than a foot long!). The infamous mugshot of the “blobfish” (Psychrolutes marcidus), aka the “World’s Ugliest Animal,” shows the violent result of a trip to the surface. As researchers Alan Jamieson and colleagues write, “…take a domestic cat, scour its hair off, drown it in near-freezing water, pressurize it to 300 atmospheres, photograph its face, and then declare it ugly. The cat scenario would certainly be met with immediate disgust and outrage but it is exactly what the image of the blobfish portray.” Others wish to incite fear, shock, or disgust. If you search the phrase “Deep Sea Creatures,” pages of image results are inevitably returned of twisted, grotesque, and bizarre creatures – some real, many fictional. All of this works to reinforce thalassophobia.

So, people fear the deep ocean. So what? Why should we care?

The real issue with fearing the deep sea is that it is actively under threat, and there is little public outcry in response. The more people hate the deep ocean, the less pressure there is to protect it. Fear has always been a powerful political tool. From colonization to resource extraction, exploitation of an area has always been easiest when people believe either (1) nothing lives there, or (2) what lives there has no value. When the former can no longer be claimed, tactics usually shift to the latter. In the case of the deep ocean, decades of research and exploration have long since shattered the illusion of an empty abyss. Thus, we shift to the latter. People protect what they love. What does that mean for what they hate?

The deep ocean is part of our planet, subject to all its challenges and human impacts. Currently, over 3,400 deepwater drills extract oil and natural gas from the Gulf of Mexico, alone. As was vividly illustrated by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, which spewed an estimated 3.19 million barrels of oil into the Gulf, this is not without risk. To combat this need for oil, people are shifting to electric vehicles, but this has consequences for the deep ocean, too. Many areas of the seafloor are rich in rare earth elements needed for batteries like Nickel, Cobalt, and Lithium. Thus, deep-sea mining is being explored as a means of satiating this demand, threatening to “clear cut” an area roughly the size of the continental U.S in the Pacific Ocean. Deepwater fishing not only removes targeted species from the deep sea, but also more than 38 million tons of unmanaged, unintentional, or unused species (“bycatch”) each year. Even fishing gear alone can be destructive. Around 48 million tons of “ghost gear,” or fishing gear lost at sea, are unintentionally generated each year – about the weight of 240,000 blue whales. Ghost gear may entangle and kill sea life for decades and, as most gear is made of highly durable nylon, is one of the largest sources of plastic pollution in the ocean. If deep-sea ecosystems manage to evade all these threats, however, there are still rising CO₂ levels and seawater temperatures to contend with.

If we want to protect the deep ocean, then we must actively change the way we talk about it. The deep ocean is a tapestry of beautiful environments that should be viewed with awe, interest, and fascination. For scientists, we must change how we present this place, shifting the focus away from its “alienness” to its complexity, uniqueness, and vital importance. For the public, we must make an active effort to learn about the reality of the deep ocean and combat misinformation. With resources available like NOAA’s Deep Ocean Education Project and livestreams of deep-sea dives, there’s never been a better time to learn about our deep oceans. Fear is never neutral. Being conscious of how emotions like fear and disgust can be used against us is a crucial step towards ocean stewardship. The deep sea is a frontier, but it is much less scary, and way more interesting, than you might think.

The post  The Cost of Fear: How Perceptions of the Deep Sea Hurt Conservation first appeared on Deep Sea News.

The post A very special PSA from Deep-Sea News first appeared on Deep Sea News.

And now I’m wondering if my lab and research group should adopt the same. I’ve worked hard to try to establish a specific lab culture for my group and to give us focus but this remains far from a set of operating principles.

As far as the research mission, I’ve taken a lot of inspiration recently from the Hedgehog Concept and hitting the sweet spot.

Three Circles of the Hedgehog Concept. pic.twitter.com/F4hQuRw31Q

— Blufrog Studios (@Blufrog_Studios) July 9, 2014

Adapted for scientific use…

1. Understand the science and research you are truly passionate about.
2. Identify the science and research you do better than anyone else or perhaps better the science and research that is unique to you
3. Determine the science and research that leads to the greatest impact as you choose to define it (e.g. publications, citations, conservation or policy impact, public knowledge, significant contribution to knowledge, etc.)

And to be honest, scientists most often focus 2 and 3 and forget completely to fully engage what they are passionate about. By the way, I am thinking my sweet spot is resarch at the interstection of energetics, body size, and biodiversity.

As I set squarely in the middle of my scientific career, I am thinking more about re-engaging my passion for science. With this thinking, I have set toward developing a set of core values for my research group, a set of operating principles that drives the actions and behaviors of myself, research scientists, graduate students, technicians, and undergraduates who all work in my lab.

As a first crack, I came up with these

1. Do awesome science with awesome people. And to make that happen…
2. Awesome science requires safe spaces for awesome people.
3. Awesome science is open and inclusive. Awesome people are diverse.
4. Awesome science stems from being hard on ideas but easy on awesome people.
5. Awesome science require playfulness.
6. Awesome science stems from the pursuit of answers above the pursuit of papers, prestige, and payment

And now I want your feedback! What are your lab’s core principles? What is missing from this list?

Hedgehog Photograph By Lars Karlsson (Keqs) – Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=950134

The post What Are Your Research Group’s Scientific Core Values? first appeared on Deep Sea News.

boon·dog·gle
/ˈbo͞onˌdäɡəl/

noun:  work or activity that is wasteful or pointless but gives the appearance of having value.

verb: waste money or time on unnecessary or questionable projects.

The end of 2018 was tough for the Ocean Cleanup and its founder, inventor, and CEO Boyan Slat.   In September, the 2000 foot-boom and supposed plastic collection device, was first deployed about 240 nautical miles offshore of San Francisco where it was tested for two weeks.  The boom was then towed an additional 1,400 miles off the West Coast, about halfway between California and Hawaii, to begin collecting plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.  This was supposed to be the first real-world proof of concept and trials of the device in the Pacific Garbage Patch.

Note that the previous prototype in the North Sea also failed at a shallower depth in calm seas. Of course, the next step is to build a bigger one and place it in rougher and deeper seas.

But in November, Ocean Cleanup stated the system was not holding plastic it collected.  This lack of plastic collection arose from the system moving too slowly at times to hold plastic within the U-shaped collection area.  The system is supposed to work by currents pushing plastics into the booms and nets.  Yet slow and complex currents in this region of the Pacific allowed plastics to float out of the device again.

In late December, 60-feet of boom had detached due to material fatigue.  Slat then indicated that this likely occurred due to wave action placing stress on the boom. The fracture was caused by material fatigue, he wrote. That’s likely because of the intense action of the waves that puts tremendous stress on objects in the water.

So to recap, the Ocean Cleanup system cannot either collect plastic or withstand the Pacific Ocean.

 In a September interview with NPR, he said the device averages about four inches per second, which his team has now concluded is too slow. The break in the barrier was due to an issue with the material used to build it.

However, both of these issues could have easily been avoided by more appropriate simulations, analyses, and information prior to construction and deployment.

When the material failure occurred, it wasn’t due to the result of a major Pacific storm. It was just normal wear and tear, Slat said

Understanding material stresses is a key component of an engineering project and one that is well understood before construction.   Note as well that the system is not something actually new, but is a modification of RO-BOOMS used in oil spill clean up since 1988.  I am confident the specifications for use and the ocean states the booms can operate in are well known by the manufacturer and previous users alike. [UPDATE: The booms used ar eno longer the RO-BOOMS.  It is a completely different design, a recent internal iteration which may explain the failure.]

And while currents are complex, a whole field of physical oceanography exists and provides readily the information to know the current regime in the area.  If more detailed temporal or spatial resolution is needed, the Ocean Cleanup team should have conducted more field studies to gain the data on the currents beforehand.    The Ocean Cleanup has always seemed poorly developed and executed, ignorant of the best science and data available, blatantly dismissive of critique, and far too hurried.

This rush to place the device in the ocean for both good publicity and for the feeling of accomplishing something is unproductive at best and dangerous at the worst.  And it clear that Slat is committed to an overly ambitious timeline no matter the consequences.

Founder & CEO Boyan Slat announced the news in a December 31 blog post, saying “setbacks like this are inevitable when pioneering new technology at a rapid pace”, and maintaining that ” these teething troubles are solvable, and the cleanup of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch will be operational in 2019″.
Read more at http://www.mysailing.com.au/latest/ocean-cleanup-s-20-million-plastic-catcher-breaks#1R7mecWOPU9tLbJl.99

I get no pleasure in saying I told you so but…

As noted in a recent article featuring Dr. Goldstein,

But a critic who has followed Slat’s project since he unveiled it more than five years ago said the failure was predictable and that systems deployed closer to shore stand a greater chance of slowing the deluge of plastics spilling into the world’s oceans.

“I certainly hope they will be able to get it to work, but this is a very difficult environment where equipment breaks, which is why you normally do things closer to shore, where things are easier to repair,” said [Dr.] Miriam Goldstein, director of ocean policy at the Center for American Progress

In 2014, Drs. Kim Martini and Drs. Miriam Goldstein, a physical and biological oceanographer, provided a detailed technical review of the feasibility study here at DSN. Note the two of them pointed nearly 4 years ago about these issues.

….The modeling studies severely underestimate potential loads and tensions on the moored array and boom. Therefore, they are insufficient to properly design a mooring concept and estimate potential costs…

Since the authors had access to ORCAFLEX, a professional software package to design offshore marine structures, a full-scale mooring array could have been modeled to estimate loads and tensions on the moored array, but was not.

Structural deformation of the array and loss of functionality by ocean currents are not addressed…

Yeah. So these exact failures were predicted four years ago.

As this article clearly lays out, we should focus our funding and time, on more promising solutions to the ocean trash problem.

The post The Continued Boondoggle of the Ocean Cleanup first appeared on Deep Sea News.

The early years

1. Could your parents afford to live on the good side of town? The one with the right schools? Did they send you to that elite private school?

There are clear advantages to attending a top-tier high school as is evidenced in a study of college admissions data. The Harvard Crimson recently reported that in Harvard’s Class of 2017, 6 percent of admitted students came from only 10 high schools. Eleven percent of high schools with students admitted to Harvard sent 36 percent of students, while 74 percent of schools sent only one student. [link]

2. For Christmas, your birthday, or because, did you get your own computer?

In every country, students reporting “rare” or “no use” of computers at home score lower than their counterparts who report frequent use…gains in educational performance are correlated with the frequency of computer use at home. [link]

3. Could they afford for you to participate in all those afterschool STEM activities with their fees and hidden expenses?

Afterschool programs can have an impact on academic achievement. Improved test scores are reported in evaluations of The After-School Corporation (TASC) programs in New York City (Reisner, White, Birmingham, & Welsh, 2001; White, Reisner, Welsh, & Russell, 2001) and in Foundations, Inc. elementary school programs (Klein & Bolus, 2002). A more recent longitudinal study showed significant gains in math test scores for elementary and middle-school students who participated in high-quality afterschool programs (Vandell, Reisner, & Pierce, 2007) [link]

Those who are admitted to UC are likely to participate in more precollege activities. The study also shows that there is a positive correlation between student precollege participation in these activities and their college experience, academic and civic engagement although the relationship is rather weak. The results also reveal that the participation in extracurricular activities and volunteer and community services is a significant predictor on first-year GPA and persistence. The more activities students participate in, the higher their first-year GPA is and the more likely they persist with their current college programs. [link]

However, we found that a substantial portion of students, particularly those in lower-income groups, are not fully engaged in a well-rounded school experience that includes activities — and too often, it’s because of cost. [link]

4. Did they send you to that cool summer camp?

Steven Infanti, associate vice president for admissions at Harrisburg University of Science and Technology, said a STEM camp experience is something that makes him take a closer look at a student’s application. “When I look at an applicant who has a 2.5 [GPA], which would be kind of a borderline admit for us, but I see on his application, I participate in this camp…that shows a lot of initiative and someone who has a passion,” he said. [link]

5. Did you get to travel to the ocean on vacation? Could you afford to travel abroad?

From a prominent university’s website,

High school study abroad programs, and even international vacations, are fantastic opportunities for cross-cultural understanding, learning, and personal growth. For that reason, they can certainly be helpful experiences to draw on when applying for colleges. [link]

6. Did you get to learn to scuba dive?

Being a scuba certified is not at all recquired for being a marine biologist.  Although I do scuba dive and am a divemaster, I rarely if ever use it for my research.  However, many “career advice” websites online definitely recommend it.

There are no certification requirements for marine biology. However, because diving is a large part of marine biology, many schools recommend that students become open water certified and take a course in scientific diving. [link]

7. Did you get to participate in all kinds of wonderful experiences because you had free time? Were you blessed and did not have to work a full- or part-time job?

Data was collected from a very large sample of students when they were in 8th, 10th and 12th grades, and again two years after they graduated. The researchers compared groups by controlling for their economic background, ethnicity, gender, and prior educational experiences. They measured outcomes including standardized test scores, school grades, courses taken, attendance, staying out of trouble, educational and occupational aspirations, post-secondary employment and college enrollment. In general, results showed a pattern of negative effects for students who worked during high school. In particular, working in the final year of high school had a significantly negative effect. These negative effects occurred even from working a small number of hours per week… working during high school undermines students’ commitment to and identification with school and subverts traditional academic goals. [link]

8. Could you even afford to stay in high school?

Using data from the 2008-2012 American Community Survey, researchers at the Urban Institute found that nearly a third of the 563,000 teenage dropouts left school to work. These 16- to 18-year-olds were disproportionately male and Hispanic, and ended their education either at the beginning of high school or nearing the end. Roughly 75 percent of them are native-born Americans, the new study said. [link]

The college years

9. Could you afford not to go to the best school?

Of the 113 Supreme Court Justices, 40% of them attended an Ivy League university. Currently, all of the nine Justices went to an Ivy League. In CNN’s top 100 startups list, 34 of the CEOs went to Harvard…A study conducted by the US Department of Education in 2015 revealed that a decade after enrolling in a four-year college degree, the average income of a typical student is $40,500 USD a year…at the very least you’ll receive on average $19,200 USD more than the standard US college graduate [by attending an Ivy Leage University] [link]

Even when there isn’t a policy of exclusion, students at elite universities join networks of professors and alumni whose members offer each other information, support, and advice that isn’t available to outsiders. [link]

In a corporate environment that still largely favors white men, an Ivy League college degree opens doors that would otherwise remain closed for most. In recent years, I’ve interviewed successful people in a variety of industries. Among them: One of two black presidents in the history of the Harvard Law Review (the other was Barack Obama) who now runs a multi-billion dollar private equity firm, and a Yale graduate Latina female CEO of the Girl Scouts. In both cases, intelligence and perseverance got them far. But they also both agreed that an Ivy League education afforded them pivotal opportunities for their careers today, decades after graduation from those hallowed institutions. For both minorities – the Ivy “stamp of approval” became the first in a long list of achievements. [link]

Tech founders with Ivy League degrees also tended to start companies that produced higher revenue and employed more workers than the average, the report added. [link]

And while Princeton and some other Ivy League schools have generous financial aid programs, this is not the case among all universities.  It is near impossible to get an accurate view of what a typical amount of loans a student is burdened with after four years.  Take Duke University,  several reports suggest the average student loan debt is $25,000.  However, take note of the term average.  Only 37% of the student body is receiving Federal Student Loans.  This begs the question, how is this average actually calculated?  In my time at Duke as a faculty member, the dozen or so students worked in my lab as part of the Federal Work Study Program, meaning they come from lower and middle socioeconomic classes, were taken on $25,000 per year.  So pardon me if I don’t believe the average total student loan debt for Ivy League schools is low.  These universities have large student populations who can afford to attend and not take out student loans as reflected in that 37% amount.

Just keep in mind that low-income students cannot afford 95% of colleges.

10. Did they tell you that they would meet 100% of your financial aid only for you to realize that meant pile you up with school loans and work study?

Yeah me too.

11. Could you afford to leave your home and not financially help your elderly, sick, or young family members while you pursue your dreams? Could you afford not financially support your spouse and children?

Likely to be parents of young children: Roughly half of independent college students, or 4.8 million students, are parents of dependent children. Seven in 10 student parents are women, with women of color in college are especially likely to be student parents.

Twice as likely to be living in poverty: 42 percent of independent students live at or below the federal poverty line, compared with 17 percent of dependent students. In fact, nearly two in three college students living in poverty (72 percent) are independent. [link]

12. Could you afford to move to college? What about all those hidden fees and costs? Parking? Transportation?

Almost 74% said extra activities like study abroad programs and unpaid internships are important to reaching professional goals. But the same percentage (74%) had to turn down such activities due to a lack of money.  Expenses beyond tuition were higher than they thought, too. The top 5 expenses students said were “much more than expected” include: Textbooks: 63% Housing: 56% Food: 46% Exam prep classes: 45% Moving: 41% [link]

13. Could you afford your books?

the average cost of college textbooks has risen four times faster than the rate of inflation over the past 10 years. That has caused 65 percent of students to skip buying required texts at some point in their college career because of a lack of affordability. [link]

14. Could you afford a computer?

Yeah its time to update that one from high school. It should be obvious how not having your own computer could be damaging but take this one students perspective (also see this post),

The problem with not having a laptop comes with online assignments. It may be even more for me as a cs major, but even in gen ed courses we often had to submit assignments online or do readings online which is easier with a laptop. You can survive without one as you can use the library computers at your college or if you have a desktop you can do all your online things there- but it would be easier to just whip out your laptop wherever you are (cafeteria, empty classroom waiting for class to start, etc) to work on assignment [link]

15.  Could you afford the time for extracurricular activities, lectures, clubs, student events? Did you need to work a full- or part-time job while attending college?

More than two-thirds of independent students work on top of going to school, and the majority work at least 20 hours per week…39 percent of dependent students work at least 20 hours per week). [link]

16. Did you not participate in that marine biology volunteer opportunity because you needed to work?

Volunteer research that prevents a student from making money. Remember that most financial aid packages REQUIRE a student to make a certain amount of money over the summer. If they aren’t getting paid to do research, then they are either adding to their debt or working two jobs, neither of which is setting them up for scientific success. [link]

17. Did you not do that great educational experience at sea because you could not afford the hefty fees?

While again I don’t agree, the Semester at Sea Program is often promoted for the aspiring marine biologist.  That at least $25,074.  Keep in mind that both the University of Pittsburg and Virginia pulled out of the program for “safety concerns and complaints that its suggestions for program improvement were being ignored.”

18. Did you not take those field summer courses because you couldn’t afford it? Did you not participate in a summer research opportunity because you could not afford to not work for a summer?

I am obviously biased serving as the Executive Director of a marine laboratory.  As an undergraduate, I took summer marine biology courses for credit…at the marine lab I currently serve as the director.  These courses were invaluable for round out my education and kick-starting my career in marine science by offering experiential learning.  Likewise, a paid Research Experience for Undergraduate one summer launched my career in deep-sea biology.  These experiences are vital.

In conclusion, students with research experiences reported disproportionate gains in their ability to apply critical thinking skills in a novel context, and gain a greater understanding of the scientific research process. Many students who did not participate in research reported gains in general critical thinking skills from their coursework, but out-of-class research experiences were more effective in helping students to develop the intellectual abilities and capacities particularly valued for doing research…students who engaged in an authentic research experience, with adequate amounts of both challenge and support, described gaining an appreciation of the process of scientific research and an understanding of the everyday work and practice of research scientists. Though other out-of-class experiences clearly offered a host of benefits, student reports indicated that participation in research is a more effective way to socialize novices into the scientific research community by helping them to develop the mastery, knowledge, skills, and behaviors necessary to become a scientist. [link]

19. Did you not participate in a great paid opportunity on overseas or even across the nation because you did know how you would afford your travel there?

20. Did you purchase all those extra study guides for the GRE? Did you take the GRE training course? Could you afford to take the GRE multiple times? Could you afford to send it to numerous graduate programs?

You can read all about my views on the GRE here.  I’m not a fan but the fact of the matter is many schools still require this boondoggle of a test.

21. Did you apply to multiple graduate programs and pay all those additional application fees? Did you pay to travel to the visit those prospective graduate schools?

Given that most acceptance rates are less than 20%, applying to several programs is advised.  The application fees typically range from $50 to $100 per graduate program.

If you don’t think all of this matters, consider that,

The percentage of students enrolling in graduate school increases with family income. Among dependent 2007–08 four-year college graduates, 39 percent of those from families in the lowest income quartile, 42 percent from middle-income families, and 45 percent from the highest income quartile had enrolled in graduate school within four years of college graduation. [link]

Graduate School Years

22. Did you have enough money to take a gap year and travel abroad to visit the oceans you want to study?

In my experience, students that have traveled more extensively and have more life experiences fair better in graduate school.  No hard data here merely anecdotal but worth considering nonetheless.

23. Could you afford to move to graduate school?

Moving from Arkansas to Boston was more costly than I anticipated.  Gas, U-Haul trailer, food, and one night in a very cheap hotel all added up.  I couldn’t afford any of this and charged it all to my credit card.

24. Did you buy all those books your advisor recommend you have and read? What about the ones you will need for your research and courses?

Several books a scientist needs on a regular basis, far more often than would be convenient or practical to obtain from a library.  In many cases, these highly specialized books may not even be in the university’s library.  And because these are specialized and low print run volumes, the prices can be astronomical.  These are often out of pocket purchases.  Right now there are three books on my wishlist I simply cannot justify or find the extra fund for: Compendium of Bivalves: Full-color Guide to 3,300 of the World’s Marine Bivalves for $294.51, Reproduction, Larval Biology, and Recruitment of the Deep-Sea Benthos for $169.07, and Pattern and Process in Macroecology for $106.45.

25. Can you afford the computer and software you needed for your research?

That cheap, outdated, and slow laptop leftover from college is going to need a major upgrade.  Time for a new computer because science is becoming more and more computational and data driven.

Referring both to the modelling of the world through simulations and the exploration of observational data, computation is central not only to astronomy but a range of sciences, including bioinformatics, computational linguistics and particle physics…Computation has been an important part of science for more than half a century, and the data explosion is making it even more central.  [link]

26. Could you afford to travel to that conference or collaborators when you grant, or travel awards weren’t available?

If your advisor has grant money to cover your travel or you are lucky enough to obtain a travel grant or award you are set.  However, if not then you will need to find a creative way to pay for it on your own.  These professional conferences are tremendous benefits to your career and you cannot afford to miss the opportunity to network and hear about the latest advances in the field.

Nearly all (91%) gained new contacts that improved their research, in-the-field conservation, science communication, and/or conservation policy making. Two thirds (64%) gained ideas, contacts, and/or lessons could lead to publications. Over a third (39%) gained new ideas, contacts and/or lessons that led to grant proposals, and 36% gained contacts that led to funding. A conference is not just an avenue for a scientist to present their research to the wider community, but it can be an important venue for brainstorming, networking and making vital connections that can lead to new initiatives, papers and funding, in a way that virtual, online meetings cannot. This is why conferences matter. {link]

27. Can you afford to live on an income of $10-25k per year? Could you afford not to support your family while you pursue your career? Does your partner have a stable and high paying job?

The current poverty levels in 2018 are for 

• One person $12,140 $15,180
• Two people $16,460 $20,580
• Three people $20,780 $25,980
• Four people $25,100 $31,380

The average graduate stipend in science is $20,000-$30,000 per year.  This puts any graduate student with a family below or near the poverty level and nowhere near the middle class.  “Middle-income households – those with an income that is two-thirds to double the U.S. median household income – had incomes ranging from about $45,200 to $135,600 in 2016”

28. Can you afford your own health insurance?

Most universities do not offer health insurance to graduate students.  Health insurance for a graduate student is going to be obscenely expensive if you need to get it independently.  Current cheapest plans with high deductibles, i.e. do not ever, ever need any medical assistance, will average $440 per month.

29. Can you afford that scuba or field gear you will need for your research?

Some gear, e.g. wetsuit, hiking boots, backpacks, binoculars, is considered personal and will not be covered by a grant or your advisor.  There may not even be funds currently available to purchase these things.  When I worked in the Antarctica Seas as part of my graduate research, I needed a set of good set of wrap around polarized glasses.  There was $100 I did not have.  You need to get in the field to get that data though.

30. Can you afford to be social over drinks and food with other scientists you need to network with?

Networking is a must and nobody in science seems to give a damn if you cannot pay.  You can try to drink cheaply but at some point, that restaurant or bar bill is going to be out of your control.  When I was a graduate student, this senior professor came to dinner and charged up a tremendous bill with a fancy entree and a bottle of expensive wine. This while ordered water and the cheapest dish I could find on the menu.  When the bill was brought, the professor stated we would just split the bill evenly “because it was easier”.  By the way, as aside, here if you are a faculty member and ever pull stunts like this YOU ARE AN ASSHOLE.  Pardon my language but its true.  If you are faculty member you should really be following the pay down rule; the faculty member should always pay for the food and drinks of the all the students.

31. Can you afford to wait a long time to be reimbursed for expenses from your university?

The major invisible difficulty that I’ve observed has been the reimbursement process. It’s common practice for people to spend their own money on scientific supplies and then apply for reimbursement from their grant, actually receiving the money 3-8 weeks later. For people without substantial cash flow, this can lead to credit card debt and future problems. [link]

Postdoctoral Fellow and Faculty Years

32. Can you afford that new set of clothes to interview in?

if you’re interviewing for a job, you might want to pay some attention to the way you dress. Because interviewers — yes, even a committee of curmudgeonly old tenured faculty members, most of whom don’t wear Armani themselves — are going to make judgments about you, fair or not, based on how you present yourself. And what you wear is part of your overall presentation. [link]

33. Can you afford to be social over drinks and food with other scientists you need to network with?  Do you have the funds to take care of the people in your lab group?

See above. Don’t be an asshole.

34. Did you just realize you are 35-40 haven’t paid off your school loans and just started to contribute to retirement?

A scientist doesn’t start thinking or paying into retirement plans until that first faculty position is landed.  With the current track record of 5-6 years of postdoctoral or soft money research positions until landing a permanent position could mean being 40 before landing that first job.

To afford a comfortable retirement, a 40-year-old couple with household income of$100,000 should have amassed savings of 2.6 times salary, or $260,000, according to research by J.P. Morgan [link]

35. Can you afford for your partner not work or do they have a mobile job?

Yeah with all that moving around for graduate school, postdocs, and faculty positions good luck to your partner trying to find a meaningful career.

36. Can you afford to wait a long time to be reimbursed for expenses from your university?

See above

38. Can you personally afford to float your research and travel needs between grants?

It happens and it sucks.  Are you just going to stop doing research?  Not go to conferences?

39. Do you have the funds to pay for society memberships?

A lot of grants will not pay for society memberships.  So there is that.

So this all leaves us needing a lot of money to get from Point A to Marine Biologist.  Conservatively, I estimate that cost, to ensure the greatest amount of success, to be $591,395 to make it to Associate Professor. Granted you could choose not to do some of these things, I didn’t do many of the things listed above as undergraduate or high school student and here I am.  But it was a tremendous amount of struggle and sacrifice for me being from a lower socioeconomic group.  If you poor and then non-white and non-male on top of that, the disadvantage is even greater, the proverbial one-two punch.

But let this sink in for a moment.

Nothing above is out of the recommended, ordinary, or expected.

We have created a system that to succeed it costs

half a million dollars.

This is not the kind of science I want.  The beauty of being a marine biologist and scientist should not be only those privileged enough to pay the price.

More reading

• Poverty in the Ivory Tower
• A field guide to privilege in marine science: some reasons why we lack diversity

Below the tab, my calculations for putting real numbers on the costs of this pathway.

The post Can you afford to be a marine biologist? Or a scientist? first appeared on Deep Sea News.

The Background

Most of you are probably aware of the GRE or Graduate Record Examination. Those applying for graduate programs are required to report scores from this standardized test. The GRE, along with the resume/curriculum vitae illustrating depth and breadth of experience, GPA, letters of recommendation, and an essay are evaluated for acceptance into many graduate programs. Although the weight given to the applicant’s GRE varies among institutions, many schools and departments require the GRE and set minimum scores for application/acceptance. Typically top institutions and programs institute a high minimum GRE score to reduce the number of applicants and to ensure highly accomplished applicant pools. However, to what extent does the GRE predict success in graduate school? Does the GRE accurately measure an applicant’s ability to synthesize and apply knowledge, acquire and assimilate new information, or familiarity with mathematics, vocabulary, biology, history, chemistry, etc.?

Criticisms of the GRE

Critics of the GRE, myself included, feel that the GRE does not evaluate any of these but simply provides a metric for how well a person can master GRE test-taking procedures.  ETS, the nonprofit that administers the test, states “the tests are intended to measure a portion of the individual characteristics that are important for graduate study: reasoning skills, critical thinking, and the ability to communicate effectively in writing in the General Test, and discipline-specific content knowledge through the Subject Test” However, the Princeton Review guide states, “ETS has long claimed that one can not be coached to do better on its tests. If the GRE were indeed a test of intelligence, then that would be true. But the GRE is NOT [emphasis original] a measure of intelligence; it’s a test of how well you handle standardized tests.” Indeed, training for the test, either in a GRE course or with a book, involves more learning test-taking strategies rather than a focus on acquirement or application of specific knowledge, i.e. “cracking the system”. Before the days of computerized exams, more math questions were included on the test than the average mathematically literate undergraduate could solve in the designated time period. To prep for the math section of the GRE, I and others learned not geometry or algebra, or even logic, but rather methods, i.e. cheats or tricks, to quickly move through the question. Of course, these tricks provide little help when math is encountered in either academia or the real world.

Who evaluates and writes the questions on the GRE? The Princeton Review states “You might be surprised to learn that the GRE isn’t written by distinguished professors, renowned scholars, or graduate school admissions officers. For the most part, it’s written by ordinary ETS employees, sometimes with freelance help from local graduate students.” Unfortunately, I am not able to retrieve information about question writers online either from ETS or other sources, so there is little I can comment on. However, the lack of transparency and accessible information should give all of us pause.

I am from the old guard and took my GRE with a No. 2 pencil with which I spent hours incessantly filling little circles. Modern tests are computerized and use a computer-adaptive methodology. Simply, the difficulty of questions is automatically adjusted as the test taker correctly or incorrectly answers questions. A complicated formula is used based on the level of questions and how many you answered correctly to determine your “real GRE score”. There is a substantial criticism of the computer-adaptive methodology. One, if a test taker suddenly encounters an easy question mid-exam, they may deduce they have not been performing well thereby affecting their performance through the rest of the exam. Test takers may also be discouraged if relatively difficult questions are presented earlier on. Second, unequal weighting is given to questions, with earlier questions receiving more and setting precedent for later questions, biasing against test takers who become more comfortable as the test continues. ETS is aware of these issues. In 2006, they announced plans to radically redesign the test structure but later announced, “Plans for launching an entirely new test all at once were dropped, and ETS decided to introduce new question types and improvements gradually over time.”

The GRE, a financial burden for students.

The GRE is expensive to take, $160 per test for U.S citizens.  Most students will take it at least twice to try to get their score higher.  This encouraged by both academia and ETS.  If you buy GRE prep books, which is also encouraged, you could easily be out another $100.    At the minimum,  a student is putting out $420.

It is often encouraged that the prospective graduate student also takes a GRE prep course.  I will use Kaplan as an example, but there are others.

• In person course $1,299 or in person plus $1,699 (link)
• Life online $999 or live online plus $1,399 (link)
• Tutor $2,499 (link)

By the time you count in missed work hours for test taking and preparation, transportation to the test (mine was 1-hour from my college), and various other expenses, a student could easily be out a significant amount of money.   It is also an additional $27 to have your own GRE test scores sent to more than the 4 “free” schools that come with the test.

So is the GRE finding us the best students or simply the richest?

Educational Testing Services: a multinational operation, complete with for-profit subsidiaries

So who is ETS? They are a nonprofit 501(c)(3) created in 1947, located in Princeton, New Jersey. In an article from Business Week…

”Mention the Educational Testing Service, and most people think of the SAT, the Scholastic Aptitude Test that millions of high schoolers sweat over each year in hopes of lofty scores to help ease their way into colleges. But if ETS President Kurt M. Landgraf has his way, Americans will encounter the testing giant’s exams throughout grade school and right through their professional careers. Landgraf, a former DuPont executive brought to the organization in 2000 to give ETS a dose of business-world smarts, has a grand vision for the cerebral Princeton (N.J.) nonprofit. Worried that the backlash against college testing means a lackluster future for the SAT and other higher-ed ETS exams, Landgraf has been trying to diversify into two growth markets: tests and curriculum development for grade schools, where the federal No Child Left Behind Act has spurred national demand for testing, and the corporate market, where Landgraf sees potential growth in testing for managerial skills. By 2008, he hopes expansion in these two areas will more than double ETS’s $900 million anticipated 2004 revenue. “My job is to diversify ETS so we are no longer reliant on one or two major tests,” he says.

Does this sound like language applied to a nonprofit? From the New York Times…

It has quietly grown into a multinational operation, complete with for-profit subsidiaries, a reserve fund of $91 million, and revenue last year of $411 million… Its lush 360-acre property is dotted with low, tasteful brick buildings, tennis courts, a swimming pool, a private hotel and an impressive home where its president lives rent free… E.T.S. has come under fire not only for its failure to address increased incidents of cheating and fraud, but also for what its critics say is its transformation into a highly competitive business operation that is as much multinational monopoly as nonprofit institution, one capable of charging hefty fees, laying off workers and using sharp elbows in competing against rivals… ”E.T.S. is standing on the cusp of deciding whether it is an education institution or a commercial institution,” said Winton H. Manning, a former E.T.S. senior vice president who retired two years ago. ”I’m disappointed in the direction they have taken away from education and public service.”

In response to growing criticism of its monopoly, New York state passed the Educational Testing Act, a disclosure law which required ETS to make available certain test questions and graded answer sheets to students.

For all practical purposes, ETS has grown into a for-profit institution trading on its nonprofit status to create a monopoly (read the New York Times and Business Week articles for more alarming revelations). For example,

• As of the Spring of 2018, 24,141 graduate students were enrolled as graduate students in Louisana.
• Let’s assume that the applicant pool into Louisiana graduate programs was 2:1 (they are probably considerably more competitive), so 48,282 applicants took the GRE.
• At $160 per test (its actually $190 for non-US students), that generates $7,725,120 for just the current body of graduate students.
• If we assume the near 50,000 applicants represent the cumulative applicants over a typical 5 years Ph.D. program, i.e. represent multiple cohorts, then ETS generates conservatively $1,545,024 per year from Louisiana alone.

In 2016, ETS brought in $1,609,201,000 dollars in revenue.  You read that right. One. Point. Six. BILLION. Dollars.   Most of that revenue, over 97% comes directly from testing.    You can find the complete financials from 2016 backward at ProPublica.  ETS also markets through one of their subsidiaries, and for-profit, a test book at $33.89 (at Amazon). “We prepare the tests-let us help prepare you!”  It is unclear the total revenues these subsidiaries bring in.

The GRE does not predict success in graduate school

But what of the original question? To what extent does the GRE predict success in graduate school? A meta-analysis in 2001 by Kuncel et al. demonstrated that correlations between GRE scores and multiple metrics of graduate performance were low. Correlation with graduate GPA ranged from 0.34-0.36. With performance as evaluated by departmental faculty the correlation ranged from 0.35-0.42, time of degree completion ranged from -0.08-0.28, citation count ranged from 0.17-0.24, and degree attainment from 0.11 to 0.20. While encouraging these correlations are positive (in most cases) and even accounting that GRE is supposed to be evaluated in the context of other materials (but often are not), these correlations are not that impressive. Do we need the GRE scores to evaluate applicants? Interesting, the same study also demonstrated that undergraduate GPA performed equally well as the GRE.

Even [ETS], warns that there’s only a tenuous connection between test scores and success in graduate school. According to the ETS report, “Toward a Description of Successful Graduate Students,” “The limitations of graduate school admissions tests in the face of the complexity of the graduate education process have long been recognized.” The report acknowledges that critical skills associated with scholarly and professional competence aren’t measured by the GRE… Perhaps more alarmingly, as with the SAT, high GRE test scores time and again tend to correlate with a student’s socioeconomic status, race, and gender. Research dating back decades from the University of Florida, Stanford, New York University, the University of Missouri, and  ETS has shown that the GRE underpredicts the success of minority students…ETS studies have also concluded the GRE particularly underpredicts for women over 25, who represent more than half of female test-takers.  [link]

Death to the GRE

In recap, the GRE is a financial burden to students, poorly predicts graduate student success, and has biases associated with socioeconomic status, race, and gender with profits going to a $1 billion revenue “nonprofit” company.  It is abundantly clear, we need to rid academia of the GRE.  Thankfully, I am not the only one to believe this.  Two physics professors in op-ed in Nature (open-access) called for the same.

This is a call to acknowledge that the typical weight given to GRE scores in admissions is disproportionate. If we diminish reliance on GRE and instead augment current admissions practices with proven markers of achievement, such as grit and diligence, we will make our PhD programmes more inclusive and will more efficiently identify applicants with potential for long-term success as researchers.

As well as the President of the American Astronomical Society,

 It’s a matter of great concern to all of us: failing to draw from the full pool of talent weakens our profession. It’s vitally important to train leaders who will help our profession achieve true equity and inclusion, and thus the strongest possible astronomical community.

In a bold move shortly after, the American Astronomical Society adopted a policy to encourage departments to make the GRE optional or to stop using it.  What has followed is a wave of schools and departments dropping GREs (link, link).  Joshua Hall, Director of Admissions at UNC (on Twitter @jdhallphd) maintains a list of all biology and biomedical programs who have dropped GREs from the applicant process.  

Your next step? If your department, school, and university still use the GRE, it is time to call the faculty together and kill the GRE.

UPDATE 1: Follow the #grexit hashtag on Twitter

The post Let’s Kill the GRE first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Dear Dr. Craig McClain.  

I am contacting you on behalf of [A Major Textbook Publisher]. [The Publisher] seeks permission to use your material in the upcoming text book [Name of commonly used freshman text book but a long line of authors].  Please see the attached permissions request letter which formally lists the rights we are requesting. I am also attaching the copies of the materials we intend to use in the book along with the letter for your easy reference.  I would really appreciate it if you could kindly review the request and return the signed letter to me via e-mail at your earliest convenience. Or, you can indicate via email that you are granting us permission to use the material by agreeing to the following terms:

“Following rights to the licensed material specified herein are granted to [The Publisher], its worldwide subsidiaries and affiliates, authorized users, and customers/end-users: Use of the licensed material, in whole or in part, in the [Textbook], and in subsequent editions of the same, and in products that support or supplement the [Textbook], and in products that use, or are comprised of, individual chapters or portions of [Textbook], and in-context promotions, advertising, and marketing materials for the same; Territory (World); English; Formats (print and electronic, and accessible versions); Term (Life of the Edition + Future Editions); Print Quantity (No Limit); Electronic Quantity (No Limit).”

I look forward to hearing from you. Please feel free to contact me if you.

Thank you! Regards,

[Person from Major Publisher]

 Yeah…that was the tipping point.  So I responded back.

Dear [Person from Major Publisher]

My image is not free for use.  I can send you an invoice for usage if the [The Publisher] is interested.

Dr. Craig R. McClain

Apparently, they were fine with me invoicing them so I responded.

Dear [Person from Major Publisher]

Given the current cost of your textbook of is well over $200 for an undergraduate, I don’t believe I can support the use of my image in your textbook.  The only way I will allow usage of the image is if the company agrees to donate 30 free textbooks to the Louisiana College or University of my choice.

Dr. Craig R. McClain

 

From this, I received this response.

Dear Dr. McClain,

I passed your request to the Development and Managing Editors and after some consideration [The Publisher] is electing to decline the request.    We appreciate your response and will search for a replacement image to be included in the book.

Kind regards,

[Person 2 from Major Publisher]

Here’s the thing. How can I support a textbook that students will need $214 dollars to buy?  I cannot.  Not as a scientist committed to the tenet that information should be available to all, an educator who believes education is a right not a privilege, a mentor who needs to remove barriers for my students, and lastly someone who came from a lower socioeconomic family, struggled to purchase textbooks, and is now committed to reaching back and pulling others up.  I. CAN. NOT.

Even more, the landscape of Louisiana represents one of considerable struggle. The poverty rate in Louisiana’s poverty rate is 19.6%, well above the national average of 12.4%.  Child poverty nationally is 21.9% while in Louisiana’s is a shocking 27.8%. Twenty-four of Louisiana’s parishes are considered persistent poverty parishes with more than 20% of the population falling below the poverty line consistently since 1970.  Thirty-two parishes are classified as black high poverty areas.  These poverty rates place Louisiana number one among the 50 states in both poverty and child poverty levels (WorldAtlas.com 2016).  The ramifications of this poverty are seen in higher education in Louisiana.  The adult population with a bachelor’s degree or more nationally is 32.5% while in Louisiana is 14.7% and among African Americans, the national average is 14.7% compared to the 13.4% in the state.

I am, and need to be, personally committed to providing educational opportunity to all those in this state, especially those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.  The high costs of textbooks are prohibitive for students in Louisiana. Indeed, the Louisiana Board of Regents through the LOUIS system is also committed to addressing the textbook issue including purchasing eBooks that can be substituted for required course textbooks.  This program has saved 40,000 students around $4.8 million dollars.  Also, consider that,

 college textbook publisher Cengage conducted a survey titled, “College Students Consider Buying Course Materials a Top Source of Financial Stress”. The results revealed that, “about 43% of students surveyed said they skipped meals because of the expense for books, about 70% said they took on a part-time job because of the the added costs, and around 30% said they had to take fewer classes” 

All of this has occurred on a backdrop of textbook prices rising almost 1000% in recent years — more than three times the rate of inflation (Bureau of Labor Statistics).  And instead of the publishers admitting there is a problem, they deflect.

Marisa Bluestone, spokeswoman for the the Association of American Publishers, called the BLS data “misleading” because of the “law of small numbers” where a small item that increases from $100 to $200 will appear as a 100 percent increase whereas if tuition increases from $10,000 to $11,000 it’s only a 10 percent increase. Further, the BLS data is “not the reality today” added Laura Massie, spokeswoman for the National Association of College Stores (NACS), as it doesn’t count buying used books or renting.

The prices for academic institutions to access the scientific literature has also gotten out of hand.  Despite scientists volunteering to both serve as editors and reviewers for journals and often paying to publish in these journals, many for-profit publishing companies continue to rake in profits while choking out access to the very scientists and scientific institutions they expect to volunteer and read their publications.

Last week the marine lab (the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, LUMCON, where I serve as Executive Director) received the notification for renewal for a major journal, now published by a for-profit publisher. The cost for the publication next year is $9,545. The average inflation rate since we first subscribed to this title (starting in FY2010) is just over 20% annually. The number of issues has not changed (12 per year), nor has the size of the issues in terms of pagination, so it’s not a matter of getting more for the money.  Another way of looking at it is that one journal subscription would have eaten up 25% of the journals budget that we allow for LUMCON’s small library. It is hard to justify spending $10,000 a year for a single subscription for less than a dozen faculty.

So a couple of weeks ago, LUMCON made a bold move.  We canceled all of our paid journal subscriptions. Every. Single. One. Of. Them.  These funds will remain with our library, reinvested into other initiatives.  We have set aside some of these funds to purchase hard volumes without electronic versions, pay for singly purchased articles from the canceled journals, investing heavily in LUMCON faculty to publish in Not-For-Profit, Open Access Publishers, new library printers, and variety of other smaller library upgrades.  Needless to say, the amount LUMCON spent on journal subscriptions was considerable and freeing up those funds is actually allowing us to be able to provide BETTER support to our scientific teams.

You read that right.  I feel that even though we are losing journal access and the burden on the faculty and librarian to find needed articles may be higher, the funds that LUMCON now has available to invest in other library projects will provide a greater depth and variety of support for scientists and students at LUMCON.  Our journal access simply prevented us from affording these programs and infrastructure before.

I am in a position of leadership and have an amazing, supportive, and forward-thinking faculty to work with.  We are able to accomplish things that may not be possible in a larger university system.  So what can you do?

I am going to take a hard stance but here we go.

1. Do not require textbooks for your courses. Provide other materials and make them freely available to your students.
2. If you absolutely need to use a textbook, teach out of older editions. Provide in your syllabus a variety of links where that textbook can be purchased at a reduced fee. If you ever come across a good deal on that textbook, purchase it yourself.  Give or loan the book to your students in need.
3. Work with your university and state on ebook programs that purchase electronic rights to textbooks that are made freely available to your students.
4. Through your departmental and university committees, and your faculty senate, start working with your university (or putting pressure on them) to replace the antiquated and overpriced book model at your institution.
5. Do not serve as editor, reviewer, or author of a paper in a for-profit journal. Support the innovative models you want to see.  I recognize the commitment will be dependent on your career stage.  But you the senior faculty need to step up to the plate and be an example. Create safe places for junior faculty to be able to pursue this.
6. Change evaluation policies for faculty that reward open science models and decrease value on publishing in and with for-profit journals and publishing houses.
7. Do not grant interviews to journalists that work for these for-profit publishing houses and/or limit access to the materials behind a paywall. If we believe that scientific information should be available to all, then the public discussion and public translation of that work should also be freely available.
8. Educate yourself on open-access publishing standards. Here is a directory of all open-access journals.  Read about the difference between gold, green, and even copper open access standards.
9. Lastly, make sure you retain copyright over all your own work and make sure it is available for free on the web. I have been woefully poor on this front.  But as of today and moving forward, I will be posting all my preprints on https://arxiv.org/.  I will research all of the copyright and sharing restrictions on all of my published articles and try to find solutions in making them all more available.

I realized that this is a tremendous amount of burden on all us all.  Indeed, many times in science what is for the benefit of the scientific community is not for the benefit of the individual scientist.  These are big standards to follow, and depending on your career stage, opportunity, current funding, etc., you may not be able to follow all of these or follow them all of the time.  This does not make you a bad person or scientist.  But with all of us trying to make small decisions in the right direction, working toward this goal, we will move the field in total to the right place.

UPDATE: A colleague and friend asked this…

Great piece but genuine question, does open access = not for profit? Who are the not for profit publishers? Is there a list somewhere? I am all for open access and detest the pay wall system. But the problem with the current open access model is it places the burden of publishing cost on the individual scientist as opposed to the pay wall model where costs are met by library subscription and it is “free” for the individual researcher to publish. There must be another way to do this? I would like to see more societies running and profiting from journals. Then the profit goes back into science.

So open access does not always equal not for profit.  These are not mutually exclusive categories.  A journal can be

1. Completely open access, hybrid open access (papers are open access if the author chooses to pay additionally), or closed access
2. For- or non-profit
3. Society or not  (profit can be completely applied to the society or shared with a large for- or non-profit publishing house).

For example, PeerJ or PloS are open access and not for profit (UPDATE: Ok, ok people…PeerJ is technically for profit).  Nature Communications is an open access and for profit.  Unfortunately, I am not aware of a list of not for profit or non-profit journals.

My colleague does raise another issue which I’ve been burdened by for a while, the movement of paying for publishing of articles from the institution to the scientist.  The switch does not really address the real money issue and ultimately the taxpayer is footing the bill, the conduit of the money is just different.  I am not sure what the right model here is to solve this dilemma.  I am a fan of the PeerJ model that limits the publishing cost to a one-time fee for authors with each author of the paper paying this fee.  But the fee is negligible and spans an entire career.

Pricing for Lifetime Memberships is (from October 1, 2016):

• Basic: $399
• Enhanced: $449
• Premium: $499

Memberships allow for one, two, or five peer-reviewed publications per 12-month period respectively, counting from your last publication to your next first-decision.

The post Tipping Points, For-Profit Scientific Publishing, and Closed Science first appeared on Deep Sea News.

1. We focus a lot on science communication as the generation of content.  However equally, and if not more, important is the filtering of content.  In the last few years, poorly informed, incorrect and out right maliciously wrong content has become prolific.  We need now, more than ever, for trusted domain experts to amplify, share, and provide reliable and accurate information. I saw this first hand reporting here at DSN with both the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill and the Fukishama Reactors that bad information was rampant and people were looking for trusted content.

2. Somewhere we stopped teaching students and the public how to critically evaluate information. Or may be it never existed at all.  We need with renewed vigor to teach students and the public how to think, reason, and evaluate information.  We need mandatory classes and lessons across education levels in logic, philosophy, mathematics, statistics, problem solving, and scientific methodology.

3. We need to make sure good and correct information is more accessible and more viral than bad information.  We need to make it easier for students and the public to get the information they need to be an informed citizenry.

4. Science needs to be more open.  Open access publishing, science communication, and citizen science and other initiatives were good start of a larger “open” movement.  But now we need to swing the doors of science open a little wider.  We are not open or honest to our failures in the enterprise of science.  Metal health issues, inequality, profiteering, and harassment run rapid.  We need change and a river in Egypt isn’t the first step.

We need to be more open about our failures not just successes. @DrCraigMc giving a rallying cry rant I needed to hear and can get behind this morning. #nerdsoftrust

— KT (@vivalakt) June 25, 2018

5. We need to renew the social contract between educational institutions and the public.  We need to place value on an informed and educated citizenry.   This is the hallmark to economic prosperity and quality, political stability and growth, innovation in the sciences and humanities, and overall public health.  The renewal of this contract comes first and foremost with economic commitment from local to national levels and the foresight that this investment will be returned 10-fold.

6. Scientists need to all become nerds of trust. On Facebook, over beers at the bar, in your local and state government meetings, you need to be there with science.

@DrCraigMc of @deepseanews encourages us librarians to be “nerds of trust for friends & family” & use social media like Facebook to discuss science in our social spheres. @alaannual #alaac18 @ALA_ACRL #STS pic.twitter.com/8it9UtOV4m

— Michael R Leach (@mikeleach42) June 25, 2018

7. Science communication needs to be goal and mission oriented.  The idea of a “Field of Dreams” model of putting something out there and expecting it work is ridiculous.  If you have not thought about what success is and how you are going to measure it, stop now.  Science communication has to be deliberate in action.

“We need to stop half-assing our science outreach” and to think I almost meh’d out of this mornings session because sleep. >⁦@DrCraigMc⁩ https://t.co/5wOgz5bTEJ

— KT (@vivalakt) June 25, 2018

8. We need to break out of the echo chamber.  If you defriended all of your Facebook friends who had different political leanings to you, you are probably part of the problem.  Are your science communication efforts only reaching the NPR and PBS, science-enthusiast audience?  Was the last science and drink night you talked at just hipsters in tweed? Probably…  Are you still wondering why the public is struggling with science or just actively anti-science.  YOU ARE NOT TALKING TO THEM.  We need new and creative ways to reach new audiences especially those in lower socio-economic classes. We need to go to where they are and put science there.

9. We need to create and support places and times of innovation…places that domain experts in humanities, social science, education and pedagogy, science communication, and scientists learn from each other and build together.  These need to be places that applaud risk and go after moon shots while focused on action and products. Events like #oceandotcomm are one example.

10. Even if we don’t get anything else right, we need to get one thing right.  Be passionate.  This idea of science as cold, heartless, and stale enterprise needs to die.

“Be passionate. Science is not a cold place, it is an amazing place. Share that.” – @DrCraigMc in how we connect and excite the community in science efforts #alaac18

— Paige Dhyne (@LibandLife) June 25, 2018

The post 10 Things Science, Science Communication, and Just Maybe All of Academia Needs first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Ocean science and conservation, like any human enterprise, is subject to its fair share of internal messiness from time to time.  As someone whose expertise and experience intersects several discrete domains (coral reefs, sharks, marine protected areas, and policy), I’ve witnessed plenty of dust-ups, arguments, and spats over the years.  And this week’s flurry of discussion instigated by a New York Times editorial on ocean protected areas is just the latest kerfuffle. In his op-ed, Bigger Is Not Better for Conservation, coral reef scientist and California Academy of Sciences curator, Dr Luiz Rocha, argues that large-scale, remote marine reserves are a disservice to ocean conservation.  It’s Dr Rocha’s perspectives, however, that seem more damaging.

Rocha’s argument hinges on four key points:

1. The current tally of big, remote marine reserves is in low-conflict, easy to protect (ie, low-hanging fruit) areas of the ocean where human reliance upon them is negligible and therefore government willingness to protect is strong;
2. There’s nothing worth protecting in these big, remote areas;
3. More important, smaller, near-shore ocean areas with high levels of human use are in dire need of protection;
4. Marine protected areas should be science-based (eg, protected zones should be guided by “sustainable catch limits” of commercially targeted species).

Let’s go one-by-one to see if any of these points hold water. [Note: For the sake of brevity, I’ll be using the acronym MPA frequently in this piece for “marine protected area,” but it will also serve as shorthand for “marine reserve,” “protected area,” “locally managed marine area,” or “marine managed area.”  I recognize that an MPA may not be managed or enforced, but let’s forego that technicality for the moment.]

POINT 1: “Big MPAs are easy and less consequential.”
As of today, there are approximately 20 large-scale protected areas across the ocean (ranging from tens-of-thousands to millions of square kilometers in protected area).  This includes a range from the Marianas Marine National Monument’s 16,400 square kilometers to the 1.15 million square kilometers of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument in Hawai’i.  These MPAs may consist of fully-protected, no-take (no fishing/extraction) designation to protection that still allows multiple uses.  According to the folks at MPA Atlas, there are approximately 15,000 small, coastal MPAs around the world.  Some of these, like Cordelia Banks off the island of Roatan in the Bay of Honduras, encompass only 17 square kilometers.  Many are even smaller.  Totaling all of the massive/remote and small/near-shore MPAs together gets us to approximately 2% of the ocean under some form of protection.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) World Conservation Congress, held in Hawai’i in September 2016, called for member nations to set aside “30% of each marine habitat” in “highly protected MPAs and other effective area-based conservation measures” by 2030, with the ultimate aim being ”a fully sustainable ocean, at least 30% of which has no extractive activities.”

For rhetorical effect, I’ll reiterate that as of March 23, 2018, only 2% of our global oceans is protected, and 2030 is only twelve years away.

As someone in the MPA biz, I can testify that there are at present a small handful of big, deep-pocketed, international NGOs working on big international MPAs: The Pew Charitable Trusts, Conservation International, Oceana, and National Geographic. These folks have the gravitas, influence, and resources to capture heads of state attention and convene forums necessary to get things done.  You can bitch all you want about the pros and cons, but this is the reality.  Alongside the big NGOs, there are tens-to-hundreds of small to medium-sized NGOs that are working simultaneously on everything from big/remote MPAs to smaller/near-shore MPAs.  Sometimes the big NGOs work in concert with the smaller ones.  Sometime not.  It’s all site dependent.

Having worked on everything from massive MPAs to tiny MPAs over my career, I can say that none of them were “easy wins.”  So-called “low hanging fruit” may represent a unique opportunity in time.  You may have a receptive government or local community that welcomes the process.  It’s always easier to work with the willing than the resistant.  But every MPA effort in which I’ve participated involved strategy, identifying champions, public consultations, negotiations, community organizing, building political will, battling nefarious characters, rebooting strategy, sweating-out votes, and of course finding funds to support all of this.  If there are “easy wins” out there, big or small, I sure would appreciate someone pointing me in that direction.

Protecting big/remote areas or smaller/near-shore areas is not an either/or game.  This is not a binary proposition of doing one or the other.  It’s a yes/also.  We need to protect small, not so small, medium, larger, big, bigger, and massive tracts of the ocean.  We need to protect what is easy to protect, and what is harder to protect.  We must gather every bit of low-hanging fruit, and plan to reach the currently out-of-reach fruit.  MPAs occupy a spectrum or continuum, and we need to be prepared to work with everything along that spectrum.  Some NGOs will have a mandate (and talent) for pursuing big swaths of ocean.  Others are more tuned to work on local needs.  But there is a lot of real estate between the biggest and smallest MPAs for organizations, individuals, and yes, even FUNDERS to find their niche.

POINT 2: “There’s nothing worth protecting.”
This is just wholesale wrong.  What is Rocha considering as “worth” protection?  Certainly, there are species whose entire life cycle may be captured by the boundaries of an MPA.  Other species may only spend a portion of their lives within the boundaries of protection.  Protected areas are designed to factor in these variables.  But not all MPAs are envisioned around biological significance alone.  The Monitor National Marine Sanctuary in North Carolina, the very first marine national monument designated by the United States in 1975, honors the historic significance of the shipwreck of the famed Civil War ironclad, USS Monitor.  Similarly, the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument and the entire Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, including the 110 seamounts, open waters, and all life in that area are considered biocultural resources and linked to the Hawaiian people through environmental kinship.

The ocean as a cultural seascape is vital to Hawaiian identity, their being, and essential dimension to their cognitive understanding of the world.  The ocean waters in Papahānaumokuākea were an ancient pathway for a voyaging sphere that occurred between this region and the main Hawaiian islands for over 400-500 years (ca. AD 1300-1800).  The practice of traditional wayfinding and voyaging—recently popularized in the film Moana and which is one of the most unique living traditions of the world—requires protection of the entire marine environment and open waters, not just the islands and reefs, because it relies on biological signs and natural phenomenon, such as winds, waves, currents, and the presence of marine life and birds at key moments and locations.

At the same time as Papahānaumokuākea was successfully expanded in 2016 by President Obama, the State of Hawai’i also supporting the establishment of small, coastal community-managed makai areas, driven by and for the community.  Yes, both can happen at the same time and using the same human capital, as many of the same people fought for both the small makai areas and the big Papahānaumokuākea effort.

POINT 3: “There are more important, smaller places to protect.”
Importance is relative and subjective.  It is place-driven and context-heavy.  What is important to someone in Brazil, might be less so to someone in Hawai’i.  So instead of casting stones at our neighbors, perhaps we should recognize that there are seriously limited resources, conservation bandwidth, and political will, and try to triage our priorities.  I recognize that the reality is that not all NGOs/organizations like to play-well together.  Furthermore, some places and approaches are simply not tenable due to practical considerations and political and social realities.  Again, this is a reality of modern conservation.  But as I mention above, effective MPAs do not occupy one half of a binary state.  It’s not either small or large.  Remote or near-shore.  Fully managed/enforced or paper parks/un-enforced.  Every single MPA in existence occupies a position somewhere along a continuum of effectiveness.  Even an un-managed, unfunded, and unenforced MPA is a work in progress along that continuum.

POINT 4: “They’re not science-based.”
Science should help inform MPA zoning and designation.  No questions or arguments here.  But the science needed may at times be incomplete or lacking.  Many decisions around the world, particularly in developing nations, on “sustainable catch limits” are not acted upon because data is deficient.  Should we be expected to wait for the science to be decided and settled (whatever that might mean) before action/conservation measures can be activated?  And science is but one arrow in our quiver that we should use to scope, establish, and manage MPAs.  The social sciences and economics are also driving MPA priorities and planning.

Finally…
I find an editorial like Rocha’s to be, quite frankly, dangerous.  Staking-out a claim on one side of a false dichotomy or constructing straw man arguments is the purview of graduate school.  I get it… Rocha would like to see more love shown to near shore/coral reef areas (including where he has worked in Brazil).  But what is the benefit to conservation as a whole to publish these half-baked propositions that large, remote MPAs are a waste of time in the pages of The New York Times and under the banner of an august and internationally recognized organization like the California Academy of Sciences?  We are not currently living in normal times, and this sort of rhetoric plays right into the hands of those keen to see less ocean protection, not more.

For the first time in US history, an administration is rolling back protections on national monuments, both land and sea.  Australia just this week has announced the possibility of cutting in half the protections for the Coral Seas MPA.  Conservation in one place in the ocean is not the enemy of conservation in another place.  And MPAs are not a binary switch of either big or small…  Local or remote…  Fully protected or not.  If we are going to get to the IUCN recommended target of 30% of our oceans under strong protection by 2030, we need to ramp up protections everywhere along the MPA continuum.  Yes/Also should become our mantra!  We must embrace a process of continuous improvement in our MPA work, not display a reflex of undercutting other conservation efforts.  And we need to keep our focus and attention on the real threats to a healthy ocean: over-fishing, illegal fishing, pollution, climate change, and lack of political will for action.

The post Embracing Yes/Also: Marine Protected Areas Are Not An Either/Or Proposition first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Liz Neeley and I discussed this in our 2014 paper.

In terms of social media outreach, or outreach in general, the impact on a scientist’s career remains largely unquantified and quite possibly indirect. “Many faculty members identified their primary job responsibilities as research and post-secondary teaching. They felt that outreach participation hindered their ability to fulfill those responsibilities and might be an ineffective use of their skills and time, and that it was not a valid use of their research funding”. In the survey by Ecklund et al., 31% of scientists felt that research university systems value research productivity, as indexed by grants and published papers, over everything else, including outreach. With this prioritization structure in place outreach may be perceived as unrelated to a scientist’s academic pursuits.

Perhaps because of both the ease of quantification and the impact is hypothesized to be direct, one specific question continues to generate considerable attention.   If a paper receives a significant number of social media mentions does it also receive a significant number of citations? If this correlation exist then this would support an argument that Tweeting, Facebooking, etc. about your scientific papers. This science communication would increase the exposure of your paper, including to scientists, eventually leading to more citations of that paper.  In this were true the impact of science communication would be direct and impact a metric that is used to evaluate scientists.

One of the largest studies on this topic, in analysis of 1.4 million documents published in PubMed and Web of Science published from 2010 to 2012, Haustein et al. found no correlation between a paper or a journals citation count and Twitter mentions.  However, multiple studies since do find a link between Tweets and citations rates including the papers of Peoples et al. and de Winter.

A new paper by Finch et al.  finds a link between social media mentions an citations also exists in the orthinology literature.  The authors set up the question nicely in the introduction

Weak positive correlations between social media mentions and future citations [5,8–10] suggest that online activity may anticipate or drive the traditional measure of scholarly ‘impact’. Online activity also promotes engagement with academic research, scholarly or otherwise, increasing article views and PDF downloads of PLoS ONE articles, for example [11,12]. Thus, altmetrics, and the online activity they represent, have the potential to complement, pre-empt and boost future citation rates, and are increasingly used by institutions and funders to measure the attention garnered by the research they support [13].

The findings? For a subset of 878 articles published in 2014, the group found that an increase in social media mentions, as indexed by the Altmetric Score, from 1 to 20 resulted in 112% increase in citation count from 2.6 to 5.5 citations per article.

So drop what you’re doing and start Tweeting about your most recent paper RIGHT NOW! 

But wait…

All of these studies show a correlation and not causation.  Simply put, scientific papers with a lot of social media mentions also have lots of citations.  One hypothesis would be that communicating your science broadly increases its exposure and increases the probability of citation.  And it appears that often those advocating for science communication repeat this narrative despite there currently being no support for this hypothesis.  Why is there no support?

Because the correlation between social media mentions and citations could be equally explained by other hypotheses.

So an equally likely explanation for this correlation is that papers that are popular garner both numerous social media mentions and eventually numerous citations.

Tom Webb also makes an outstanding point about the authors of such studies.

The authors of this most recent study note this overall causation and correlation dilemma as well.

Instead, our results suggest that altmetrics might provide an initial and immediate indicator of a research article’s future scholarly impact, particularly for articles published in more specialist journals…The correlative nature of this and other studies makes it difficult to establish any causal relationship between online activity and future citations

So what now?  First stop arguing, as many did on Twitter today (examples here), that Tweeting about your paper is good thing because it will ultimately generate more citations.  The jury is still out on this and will be until a study specifically is designed to test for the causation and not the correlation.

The post Will Tweeting About Your Research Paper Get You More Citations? Meh. first appeared on Deep Sea News.